Tuesday, January 5, 2016

THIS is OUR History! The COOLEST Stinkin' Badges!

Navasota, Texas is especially blessed
with interesting history, and was at one time the home of an
impressive array of Texans. And there are no more celebrated Texans
than the members of the Texas Rangers, both real and artistically interpreted. Most towns the size of
Navasota might be able to boast that they were the residence of a
Ranger sometime in history, but Navasota can boast of at least
five... and three of which we actually know of the exact badges they
wore. This is unheard of. History yes... legends sure, in the books
maybe.. but the actual stinkin' badges? Hardly ever!

Perhaps one of the oldest authenticated
badges known in Texas Ranger history belongs to Dr David Fruchtman, an Arizona
forensic scientist and criminal justice professor, who has recently
shared a badge in his collection... with provenance, which was the
Ranger badge belonging to the legendary western lawman, Jeff Milton...

Milton was the adventurous son of the
Florida Governor who came to Texas after the Civil War to live with
his sister, who had married a Navasota merchant. He did not stay in
Navasota long, and became a Texas Ranger when just 18, with the
endorsement of Navasota attorney and former Attorney General of
Texas, H. H. Boone. Milton's career with the Rangers was cut short
after some tragic gunplay, and subsequent legal embarrassment to the Ranger
organization... but he went on to become one of the most noted lawmen
of the Old West. J. Evetts Haley wrote his biography in A Good Man
With A Gun. You can read all about this Ranger's career at my blog below... just click on the LINK, after your read this!).http://russellcushman.blogspot.com/2013/12/jeff-milton-from-in-law-to-outlaw-to-law.html

But you will not see his badge in the book... in fact you
will not see it anywhere but right here!

There
are several exciting things we learn from this badge. And
some of what we learn challenges the conventional wisdom concerning
these beloved icons of Western lore. First of all, we learn that at
least some of them, HAD BADGES. The common belief is that they rarely
had badges, and few Rangers ever wore them, as they were considered
invitations to be murdered. Only on the force for a couple of years,
Private Jeff Milton had this handmade star, with his company
designation. This badge is crude, cut out of a disc of nickel, yet
the lettering has been fairly masterfully done, with a popular zigzag
technique, which is seen on many old badges. Unfortunately, the
finding has been lost. On this badge, the wearer chose to inscribe
RANGER, (singular)... not Ranger Force or State Rangers (plural). These
details may seem insignificant, but they help establish what I have
suspected... that is a total LACK of a pattern in the early badges.
And just as importantly, it is not cut out of a Mexican Peso.

The exclusive use of etching on the
badge suggests several things. Out west where the Rangers were
ranging, and where they were most likely to try to scrounge up a
badge of some sort... they had to settle for homemade badges, or
ones made by frontier jewelers, who had very limited tools and
materials. The right metal was scarce, and the tools necessary to work metals were usually not available. If a mistake was made in the cutting of it... like the chopped-up star in this badge, that
was just too bad! There were few or no stamps available to hammer
pretty letters into sheet metal.

So an engraver might have been the
closest thing to a badge maker available. My guess is that another
Ranger of Company B had this one made, and had a better one made when
he could, and passed this faulty one on to the young Ranger... who
did not need it long. It was soon just a keepsake for the young
Floridian who wandered the west for years as he tried to grow up and
get the respect he craved. Now the badge is a direct link to his life
and times... and another intriguing link in our study of Texas Ranger
badges.

Texas Ranger badges are rare. Let's
just say so rare that I went most of my life collecting antiques and
seeing hundreds if not thousands of fake Ranger badges being passed
off and nobody ever expected to really find one... You would find
diamonds in a diamond field faster than you would find a real OLD
Texas Ranger badge in an antique market. Yet my neighbor dug one up
in his yard, right here in Navasota. You can read that story (later!) here at
this LINK:http://russellcushman.blogspot.com/2012/09/a-texas-ranger-badge-makes-visit-to.html

The significance of this badge is hard
to fully appreciate. It belonged to the Navasota City Marshal around
1911-1915. M. E. Bailey was a Ranger buddy of Frank Hamer's out in
Alpine and came to help him in Navasota as his Deputy City Marshal.
He took over as marshal when Hamer left Navasota. Hamer was a devoted
fan of Bailey's and when interviewed after his death, claimed Bailey
had once single-handedly arrested a handful of Mexican generals who
were in Texas recruiting for Pancho Villa. What Captain Bailey could
not have fully appreciated were the number of Texans who supported
Villa and his revolution, and who made money off of the gun trade.
This arrest made him a huge target, with enemies on both sides of the
border, and this event may be why he left the Rangers and migrated
around 1910 to civilization on the Brazos. Some way, some how this
badge got dropped, thrown and buried in the flower bed of
his residence in Navasota, to be dug up nearly a hundred years later,
from dirt a foot deep.

The Bailey badge also teaches us
several things about Texas Ranger badges. By 1910, some were being
ordered and made by real honest-to-goodness badge manufacturers. Some
were brass or bronze, thin, pressed by machine, and featured the
ranger's name and rank and company. These were official but fairly
cheap badges. This captain's badge suggests that even a ranking
officer would have no more fancy a badge than any regular city
lawman. But it also may be one-of-a-kind.

The only common denominator between
most early ranger badges is the star inside of a circle. Several
companies out west could have been contracted to do such work as
shown in Bailey's badge... But my pick would be Anson Mills, who had
a large operation with big money government contracts in El Paso.
They manufactured a wide array of military issue belts and
beautifully ornate, brass belt buckles... for several governments.
Mills was a former Civil War Union General who came out west to make
his fortune and did so. With his fame and connections and his handy
geography, it is easy to imagine T. C. Orndorff, his brother-in-law
who did much of the “heavy lifting” doing business with many
regional law enforcement agencies. In fact there are photographs of
Texas Rangers wearing his famous Anson Mills woven cartridge belts... sporting
those beautiful buckles. Understanding the Mills'/Orndorff interest
in the socio-political situation along the Texas border, it is easy
to imagine that Mills made this badge (had his people make it) and
gave it to the young Ranger for his daring-do... but probably the
fancy brass badge only got to him after he left the force.

Bailey had moved on, probably despising
the regime that forced him out because of divided loyalties... I can
easily imagine it arriving in the mail one day while he was working
in Navasota, and as he unwrapped it, cussing it and chunking it in
disgust into the shrubbery outside his home... where it laid for a century.

The Texas Ranger badge worn by Ranger Frank Hamer.

Because of various auctions in the past
decades, we have also gotten blurry peeks at the badges worn by
Ranger Frank Hamer, before and after he served in Navasota. I have written extensively about Hamer on this blog, but we do not
know what his City Marshal badge looked like, and in fact he might not
have had one. He might easily have chosen to wear his Texas Ranger
badge, which by then was a symbol of deadly authority.

Recently I acquired a fantastic
facsimile of Hamer's earliest Ranger badge, thought by his son and the
auctioneers to have been made of brass or bronze. Few people have
studied metals enough to know that really old silver, when not
allowed to blacken from constant rubbing, will take on a deep yellow
appearance. I have seen this most often on spurs, where the patina
said brass but the polish revealed SILVER! Anyway I purchased this silver
badge, which is the spitting image of Hamer's badge down to the
scars. Possibly made by Langenbacher, the legendary badge copyist, it is unlike any other Ranger badge I have seen, replica or
real. The design of this badge is unmistakably related to the Mills Texas Ranger buckle design, assumed by many to be fakes.

Later around 1915 Ranger Frank Hamer
had one of the first classic “Peso Badges” which have become the
Ranger standard we all recognize today. They were literally cut out
of silver Mexican pesos. On the back one could easily observe the
Phrygian cap in a sunburst, and dates up until 1910 when the silver
was discontinued. Later “Cinco Peso” badges were made in the
1960's which were reminiscent of these early badges, with
(on the back) a Mexican eagle perched on a cactus, tormenting a
rattlesnake.

This Peso badge must have been the
badge he wore for around seven years until he became the Senior
Captain over the whole organization in 1922. His captain badge is
truly magnificent. It was a manufactured catalog standard, custom
made, gold plated, and no name, it had only his rank stamped in
the badge.

For a LINK to a WONDERFUL short video about Frank Hamer and his service here in Navasota, go to the You Tube address below:

You might be wondering what these
badges are worth. After watching real Ranger badges sell at auction,
I would say that because of identification, fame, and provenance, all
of these would fetch in the thousands of dollars. Anything can happen
at an auction, but I would be totally amazed if they did not bring
$4,000.00 - $7,500.00 each. Maybe more.

These are just a few examples of the
Treasures of Navasota. I will share more of them in the future. These
things testify to an exciting and legendary era in human history,
when men had to kill or be killed in a struggle between good and
evil. And when a lawman's badge was a sign of lethal authority, and
outlaws were pursued, captured and eliminated with prejudice. Let's
hope and pray we never need those kind of lawmen again. But whether
we do or not, this is what we come from, this is our history. And
history almost always repeats itself.

WELCOME

A river of Texas history, music, art and travel articles

Welcome to my "Stream of Consciousness," where I hope to give readers an artist's view of the local color and current issues of Navasota Texas, a place I have grown to love and have enjoyed for many years. Many legendary characters have made historic contributions to our incredible scrapbook, that all flow together into our story like so many streams feeding into the historic Navasota River Valley. You will find articles about Local History, Art, Navasota's Hall of Fame, our Music scene, some Political opinions, and a few original songs! So go ahead, and dip your toe into the Navasota Current!

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About this Blogger

A sixth generation Texan, landscape painter, sculptor, photographer, writer and historian, Russell Cushman shares his passion for the music, art and history of the Brazos Valley.
Russell has a blog about his art career, russellcushmanart.blogspot.com, and A great deal of his art can be viewed at his website, www.russellcushman.com.